It's like your boss at the banana stand claps his hands together, and announces how the stand has made more profits this year than the last three years combined. You say "great, my pay is based on those profits, thanks!", and the boss says, oh, wait, I only want to pay you half of what I agreed to pay you.... You say, "WTF? We have a contract!", boss says, fine, the banana stand is closed until you agree to what I want.

carnifex2005:jayhawk88: I don't follow hockey that closely; it blew my mind to learn that the NHL lost an entire season, and somehow didn't come out the other side with a limit on contract length. "Nah, the owners won't take advantage of that, we can trust them to do what's right for the health of the game over their own teams self interests!"

Bill Simmons wrote the same thing. Bettman and the owners aren't terribly smart. The only reason he's kept around is because the business of hockey is making more money than ever (though I credit the Canadian dollar for a huge amount of that).

It helped but the NHL didn't go from $800 million a year to $3.3 billion a year because of inflation and CAD being on par with USD.

Bill Simmons also is the worst kind of hockey "fan". "Hey, here's my 'fark the Bruins forever' column since they lost in the playoffs again" *Bruins win Cup* "WOOOOOOO BRUINS BOBBY ORR CAM NEELY YAAAAAY" The very next goddamn season. "Wow, the NBA is so stupid about all this lockout stuff, I know, why don't I go to LA Kings games?" *NBA comes back, Kings are a boring team, oh wait they got hot in the playoffs and beat a lot of good teams* "HOLY CRAP WHAT A TEAM WHAT A SPORT THERE'S NOTHING LIKE HOCKEY WHAT HAVE I BEEN TELLING YOU ALL THIS TIME"